Representatives from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund stand outside the Supreme Court awaiting a decision on a voting rights case from Alabama on Tuesday in Washington.

Written by

Richard Wolf and Brad Heath
USA TODAY

A bitterly divided Supreme Court drove a stake through the heart of the landmark Voting Rights Act Tuesday, striking down a coverage formula that Congress has used to monitor states with a history of discrimination.

Declaring that "our country has changed in the past 50 years," Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four other conservatives said the 1965 law cannot be enforced unless Congress updates it to account for a half-century of civil rights advances.

The court's 5-4 ruling in the case from Alabama frees states and municipalities with a history of racial discrimination from ...